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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25975726">Sharp as Steel</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetamehistorian/pseuds/thetamehistorian'>thetamehistorian</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dishonored (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Canon Asexual Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Explicit Language, Feat. Daud's bad life choices, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Origin Story, Other</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 10:42:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,102</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25975726</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetamehistorian/pseuds/thetamehistorian</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Dunwall, the capital of the Isles, home of the Emperor.<br/>They say that the city makes or breaks a man.<br/>But sometimes, it creates a legend.<br/>Or a monster.</p><p>The rise of the Knife of Dunwall.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Daud &amp; Original Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Sharp as Steel</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So, long time no see!<br/>Parts of this fic have been floating around for a while and I've finally committed to writing them down. I really wanted to explore Daud's earlier years, since we know so little about them. This is my interpretation. I hope you enjoy.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>1807</strong>
</p><p>Daud stepped off the ship and onto the streets of Dunwall. He was twelve and he had just killed a man.</p><p>He was fresh from his first kill, broken and aching. The man hasn’t deserved it, but the men who had stolen him from his home hadn’t cared. They only cared that their newest recruit was appropriately hardened for the task ahead.</p><p>At his sides, his hands trembled. His eyes were red and bloodshot, although any evidence of tears had long being wiped away. Crying might have felt good to begin with, but his masters had been keen to point out their displeasure at his weakness. For the briefest of moments he had cursed his mother for teaching him that crying was not to be ashamed of, and just as quickly wanted to take it back because all it did was make him feel worse.</p><p>The night before had been spent in his cell, he refused to call it a room, on the boat his captors called home. He had rubbed his hands raw in the meagre water bowl in a fruitless attempt to feel clean, but all he see was the blood.</p><p>When he woke after a few hours of fitful sleep to the sounds of industry and bustle at the docks, he woke a changed man.</p><p>He had hoped, briefly, foolishly, that the first steps on Dunwall soil might provide an opportunity to escape, to start afresh. Despite their best efforts, his captors had not quite managed to beat the hope out of him. He had stubbornly clung the last tendrils of that flickering spark of life inside of him, determined that they wouldn’t succeed in turning him into something less than a person. That he wouldn’t become one of them. He had promised himself he wouldn’t let them win, and they hadn’t.</p><p>No, that loss, it later transpired, was a flaw entirely of his own making.</p><p>Dunwall was nothing like Serkonos. Where the southern jewel of the Isles was dust, song, and heat, Dunwall was smog, noise, and cold. The crowds at the docks were large, large enough that if he was fast and timed it right, he might be able to get away, find a ship back home and beg passage.</p><p>Only, when the opportunity came, he froze, because he suddenly spotted someone who looked just like the man who had, not twelve hours ago, been on the end of his knife.</p><p>Then, the heavy, familiar hand descended upon his shoulder and the cage surrounded him once more and he spent the afternoon frantically searching for another opportunity and never finding it, even as his quick and nimble hands divested men of their coin, none of which would ever be called his own but for the few minutes in his pockets before another of the gang came along to collect.</p><p>At the end of the day, he watched, distantly, as the least profitable boy was shoved into the lowest, darkest cell on the boat which had until then, been his, and that same heavy hand led him to a larger, brighter cell.</p><p>“Well done,” his captor said and when he failed to respond, the grip squeezed. “Aren’t you gonna show your gratitude, brat?”</p><p>“Thank you,” he said, even though the common words felt wrong on his tongue and his throat tasted like bile.</p><p>“That’s right,” said the man who had taken him from his home. “We’ll make something useful of you yet.”</p><p>As the door shut behind him and the key turned in the lock, Daud swore that he wouldn’t run, he’d learn. He’d learn everything he could about hurting and killing because he knew now that none of them were free and it wasn’t just about him anymore. Running wasn’t an option knowing that they’d just ruin another life. No, Daud vowed in that moment that he would get them all out, if he could.</p><p>His mother told him once he was quick to learn and sharp as steel.</p><p>It was time to put those talents to use.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <strong>1811</strong>
</p><p>Daud stepped off the ship and onto the streets of Dunwall. He was sixteen and he had just killed a man.</p><p>He remembered vividly the first time he had set foot in the city of Dunwall. Back then, it hadn’t been through choice, he’d been the pawn of someone else. This time, he was his own man and the one who had stolen him from his home, forced him to do horrific things that no child should have to do, learn skills fit only for thugs, thieves, and psychopaths, was dead.</p><p>Daud hoped viciously that his captor had been able to appreciate his work, even as it was turned against him.</p><p>With the body sinking to the bottom of the Wrenhaven and the blood mostly washed from his hands and clothes, he stepped once again onto the cobbled pavements of the capital of the Isles and, for the first time in years, breathed easily.</p><p>He was finally free.</p><p>The other children who had followed him, taken part in his little mutiny followed him down, some were newer and had never been to the Capital of the Isles before. They looked around with wide eyes and faced, for the first time in a long time, an uncertain future.</p><p>“What do we do now?”</p><p>“You got a family?” he asked. The boy in question nodded. He was thirteen, one of the youngest remaining. “Then I guess you should try and find them.”</p><p>“Is that what you’re going to do?”</p><p>He swallowed down the hurt with difficulty.</p><p>“No” he replied, recalling the result of his subtle inquires when they had last made landfall in Karnaca. The stories of the witch driven mad by grief and arrested by the Overseers had been hard to hear and the trail had gone cold. “I don’t have any family, not anymore.”</p><p>With that, he turned and began to walk, leaving the rest of the motley crew behind at the docks. He hoped they’d have better luck than him, he really did, but now, he had to focus on himself. Alone once again in the world.</p><p>The first few months in Dunwall proved to be especially difficult. He’d never finished his schooling and his skills, limited as they were, were not a good fit for the majority of positions that interested him in some way or another. He managed to get by through a mixture of petty theft and labour jobs, enough to survive, just.</p><p>He toyed, briefly, with the idea of joining the Watch. Although he was technically too young, he was already quite tall, and bulky too as a result of his captor’s training, if it could be called that. He probably could have lied about his age and got away with it if he had seriously wanted to join up. Eventually though, he decided that he disliked taking orders more than he desired being able to wield a sword.</p><p>He’d had enough of taking orders for a lifetime.</p><p>In the end, he settled for a stream of low-paid factory jobs, demoralizing and difficult in equal measure, before eventually giving up entirely and heading to the docks to board the first ship he found that was going somewhere far away and was willing to let him pay for passage through work.</p><p>Karnaca was no longer home, but neither was Dunwall. Perhaps, if he got lucky, he would find somewhere else where he could fit in. If not, then at least, he hoped, there would be more to life than the endless production lines of industry and the bright whale-oil powered strip lights that had dominated his nights for weeks.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>1814</strong>
</p><p>Daud stepped off the ship and onto the streets of Dunwall. He was nineteen and he had just killed a man.</p><p>In spite of his misgivings about the city and how quickly it had worn him down, in an odd way, it felt like coming home. It really shouldn’t, considering that he’d only lived there for just over a year whilst he’d had twelve years in Serkonos. He still couldn’t stand the cold.</p><p>Life on a ship wasn’t bad, as it were, so much as boring, and frequently Daud had found himself leaving at random docks and exploring the Isles. The one upside had been the view of the stars. He’d spent many a night up on deck watching the stars, looking for the constellations his mother had taught him, rolling their foreign names on his tongue.</p><p>After a few years, he decided it was time to move on. He hadn’t found anywhere that particularly appealed to him and the work on the ship wasn’t exactly stretching him, so he gathered up his coin and belongings and boarded one last ship, back to Gristol.</p><p>The night before they were due to arrive, he’d been walking back to his cabin one night when he’d heard what sounded like a struggle. Without thought, he’d slipped his knife from his boot and approached the door and the moment he’d realised what was going on he’d broken it down, grabbed the sailor, and slid the knife neatly into his throat, slicing the carotid and jugular in one smooth movement.</p><p>The girl on the bed, flushed from the struggle, looked at him with fear in her eyes until she realised what he had done. What he had spared her from. Once she had calmed down, he’d disposed of the body and sat with her through the night, talking about anything and everything because it was clear that neither of them planned on sleeping.</p><p>Her father, it turned out the following morning, was quite high in society and willing to reward even a lowly Serkonan deckhand for his actions. The coin from the noble in his pocket changed everything. It opened doors he hadn’t expected to be open for a while and was probably the only reason he didn’t end up back on a ship.</p><p>So, when he stepped back onto the cobbled streets of Dunwall he was nineteen, much more world-wise, and he had a plan for, what he hoped, would lead to a better life. A life his mother could be proud of, and had always wanted for her son.</p><p>He took the first job he found, mind-numbing though it was, and, with the money from the noble, rented a tiny flat in a reasonably well-off area and took to spending his evenings in a certain building in the district which he was, with his accommodation, now entitled to use, because he had found, to his delight, that whilst Dunwall was severely lacking in ways for the poor and downtrodden to advance themselves there were a few public libraries.</p><p>He spent more time sat between stacks of books than he did in the rooms he called home, learning all he could with one goal in mind – passing the entrance exam to the Academy of Natural Philosophy.</p><p>Although Daud had never enjoyed school overmuch, he hadn’t been stupid. His mother had taken care to ensure that and had nurtured his mind whenever the opportunity arose. He was sharp, and one of his teachers had once reluctantly proclaimed him a creative thinker. Add in the stubbornness that was an impenetrable part of his nature, and ambition to boot, and he knew he could do it.</p><p>Only, he wasn’t alone on those long evenings pouring over books.</p><p>The library was staffed mostly by a number of well-off-enough to be counted as middle-class elderly ladies. One these ladies had a grand-daughter who tagged along under the pretence of learning how to manage the library so that she might move into the professional, but in reality, spent most of her time occupying one of the desks, reading. Her grand-mother berated her for it frequently, but usually calmed down after some grumbling and the with encouragement that she was only reading the more harmless brand of fiction.</p><p>What the grand-mother didn’t know, but he did, was that the girl, the moment her guardian was out of sight, tucked the inoffensive material away and pulled out books on topics ranging from the fauna of the continent of Pandyssia to chemistry, carefully hidden by the folds of her dress to be pulled out as needed.</p><p>Her name, Daud learned one night, was Rianne.</p><p>She was the first person he had loved since his mother. It took him many years of fruitlessly chasing increasingly dark and dangerous ambitions to understand that she was not, despite his best intentions, the only thing he loved.</p><p>If she had been, perhaps a great many things would have been different.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is very much a scene setting chapter so I had a play with structure :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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